ANKARA (Reuters) - A top Kurdish PKK rebel commander has
urged Kurds living in Turkish cities to rise up and fight the
authorities following Turkey's land offensive into northern
Iraq, the pro-PKK Firat news agency said on Sunday.

Ankara began sending thousands of ground troops across the
mountainous border into northern Iraq on Thursday to crush PKK
guerrillas who use the region as a base from which to attack
targets inside Turkey.

"If they want to destroy us, our young people must make
(Turkey's) cities uninhabitable," the agency quoted Bahoz
Erdal, a senior PKK commander in northern Iraq, as saying.

"In the big cities, Kurdish youth must give their reply to
the military operations. Kurdistan's guerrillas are not just
7,000 or 10,000, they number hundreds of thousands. They are
everywhere ... in all Turkish cities," Erdal said.

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Just a couple of youths could, for example, set fire to
hundreds of vehicles, he added.

Turkey's impoverished, mainly Kurdish southeast has often
seen violent pro-PKK protests, though the region has remained
largely peaceful since Ankara began a campaign of aerial
bombing against PKK targets inside Iraq late last year.

Some cities in western Turkey, including Istanbul and
Izmir, are also home to large Kurdish populations.

"We are not against the Turkish people but such is the
logic of war," Erdal said in his statement, drawing parallels
with Iraqis' resistance to occupying U.S. forces in their
country.

The United States says Turkey, a NATO ally, has the right
to defend itself against the rebels but has also called for the
swift return of the Turkish ground troops once they have hit
their PKK targets inside Iraq.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of nearly 40,000
people since the group launched its armed campaign in 1984 for
an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey.

Turkey, the United States and European Union classify the
PKK as a terrorist organization but previous Turkish military
operations across the border into northern Iraq in the 1990s
failed to wipe out the elusive and highly mobile guerrillas.